Here are what I consider must-haves in the way of software for any of you PC do-it-your-self-ers.
First of all, you need access to the internet and a data medium. Be it CDs, jump drives, what have you. Sometimes your freshly assembled PC isn't going to recognize it's own hardware and you may or may not have the CD of drivers from the manufacturer. Laptops and USB jump drives serve this purpose for me. Tricky thing is, if your Ethernet port is not working and you don't have the drivers you will need the internet to fix your internet! This actually happens too. The PC my friend and I built for him didn't recognize it's own ethernet port after OS instillation and he didn't get a drivers disk with his MOBO because it was a manufacture refurb. Our conversation via TXT messaging went something like this:
"My ethernet isn't working. I go into the control panel and it says there is no networking hardware installed."
"You need the drivers for the motherboard."
"Where do I get those?"
"The internet"
"So I need the internet to fix my internet?"
"Yes."
I then went to the manufacturer's website and downloaded all of the motherboard's utilities and driver packs to a jump drive so that we could get him online. The first thing we did was install the ethernet driver and re-boot. It automatically hooked itself to the internet. I finished installing the rest of his drivers, sounds, USB 3.0, GPU, etc. and reboot again. Then I moved over copies of my favorite programs that I had on my jump drive, then we went to ninite and got the rest. He reports today that his PC is running flawlessly and seems very excited about it's performance.
Once you've got your PC assembled you need an operating system. If you have a dual core processor or better you will want a 64 bit OS. If not, you'll need a 32 bit OS. Windows XP will only recognize 3GB of RAM so keep that in mind when you are building older PCs. I myself find it very useful to have a legacy computer around. I have floppy drives and zip drives. Floppy drives are important in older systems. I use my legacy system for old-school gaming and utilities. Costs practically nothing to assemble and with a little know-how it can be a very effective computer. I was burning full Data DVDs in 7 minutes flat. Sure newer hardware could do it faster but not for the same cost, which was nothing. Most PC users will find an old tower becomes useless with age and is pretty well the right track of thinking. They fill with dust, get cluttered with programs and just can't keep up with what the internet has to offer these days. And let's face it: most of us have a computer so that we can internet. That's basically all my laptop is to me: an internet machine.
Okay I've gotten off-track somewhere...
Operating system! Yes!
You need an OS for your machine. My favorite is Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a free distribution of Linux (great thing about Linux is it's free! It's software is free! The updates are free! There is so much free it hurts when you think about all the money you've spent in your life on software! Ubuntu is very user friendly, extremely stable and I think my laptop updates at least once a week. It's got it's quirks though, so be ready for that. Sometimes the update won't run so I have to run it manually in the command terminal. It's pretty easy, the Ubuntu website has everything you need to know on there. Built into the OS is a software center that you can pretty well just search what you need, find it, and download it for free. Not everything is free. But most things are. Like Libre Office. Just like Microsoft office but free. Gimp is similar to Photoshop but free. You can see where I'm going with this. Also it is less prone to viruses. I've never had a virus or malware or adware on my machines running Ubuntu. Most of them are coded for Windows so that right there is a great line of defense.
I have the most experience with Windows XP. That is another reason I keep a legacy machine around that runs it. But I don't recommend it for modern day use to the average user. I use it for my favorite old games and it's a tank at the utility type-stuff I do. Microsoft no longer supports it so there could easily be holes in it's security and functionality that will never be patched. I have heard of some folks who made or are making a service pack 4 update to keep XP going. Haven't looked into it much though. Yet.
Windows 7 is the thing to have right now for gaming. You can game on Steam on Ubuntu but it does have limited hardware support and I don't have much experience gaming with it. Avoid Windows 8 and Vista at all costs. Yikes.
Okay, enough blah blah, here's what you came here for:
Ninite.
A friend of mine asked me if I had ever used Ninite and I was like, "Holiday who-be-what-ey?" Go to their website, check all the boxes of the programs you want, click "get installer" and wait. Whammo! everything all at once. Brilliant. Their website is super: https://ninite.com/
Internet explorer is good for one thing: downloading a better web browser. I use Firefox. A million times better than IE and I favor it over Chrome. Chrome is RAM hungry and seems to be less stable (in my experience anyway) So do yourself a favor and use Firefox. Also, avoid toolbars. They are the enemy. They take up space and bog down the browser. Here's a link to their download page: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
Get Foxit reader. It's a PDF viewer that is lightweight and runs smooth. I'm a big fan. It's perfect for all the hardware manuals I download and the search feature is quick too. Here is their home page:
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/
Libre Office is basically free Microsoft office. Yes it's a little different as my wife will insist (who primarily uses my Ubuntu powered laptop for her school-work) but it's fully compatible and most importantly: free. Here is their main page: https://www.libreoffice.org/
AdAware is a great free virus and malware scanning and removal program. It's a pain weaving through all the hoo-ha to get it up and running though. They throw in all this BS about paying them money to upgrade to a better version and you have to enter your email, wait for the code to come to you, then enter that code in the program before it will work. They do this so they can cram more "Buy the upgrade version" spam down your throat. I know it sounds lame, but it's good software.
Here is their homepage: http://www.lavasoft.com/
If AdAware doesn't sound that great to you get SpyBot Search and Destroy. It's similar in it's function but really bogs the system down while it's running. And it's programmed to run on system boot up. I usually disable all un-neccisary boot up instructions to optimize for speed. Here is their homepage: https://www.safer-networking.org/dl/
Rufus is awesome. It's for turning USB jump drives into bootable drives. Makes installing OSs a breeze and eliminates the requirement for ROM drives. (Faster that a ROM drive too) Their website is odd. But here it is: https://rufus.akeo.ie/
CD Burner XP is the best disk burning software I have ever used. If you need to make Optical disks, get this program. Here is their website: https://cdburnerxp.se/en/home
WinCDEmu is for mounting ISO images. It's so simple it's stupid. Here's there main page: http://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/
7Z: This is the best compression program out there that I've found. It will do everything from .zip and .rar to .7z and .iso files (yes! you can create or un-compress disk image files!) Here's their page: http://www.7-zip.org/
OpenHardwareMonitor is a very handy utility. It can give you real-time stats on your hardware. It'll read temp sensors, display hardware model numbers, and show chip usage. I use this to identify hardware such as MOBO model number to aquire correct drivers, exactly what CPU is in the socket, and temps in the case. Runs off an executable so it's portable too. Here's a link: http://openhardwaremonitor.org/
CPUz is similar to OpenHardwareMonitor. It doesn't show temps or usage but it does show model numbers and specs. And it'll show you RAM data too. Another very handy program if you assemble computers from old parts like I do. http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html
Speedfan is great too. It will show temps and fan speed and stuff. It'll also let you control fan speeds. It has some other advance features like overclocking and stuff that I've never touched. Here's the homepage: http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php
If I come across more I'll be sure to post them.
End.
No comments:
Post a Comment